She started up once—thought she saw a man standing in the filtered night light of her bedroom. Her heart pounded as her mind juxtaposed two unrelated but wrenching events. He might be a still-stalking murderer... or the ghost of Max Kinsella. The lighter blurs that were her windows absorbed the illusion. She slept even harder after that.
She awoke again, unsure whether it was late or early. Notions and images floated in her mind, multicolored motes in a golden eye, darting away just as they became detectable. An alphabet soup of words, type, letters, and even sounds, images made a revolving ABA exhibition in her head; through it all threaded a stethoscope and a knitting needle. Butterflies of the brain. And ladybugs. Ladybug, Ladybug. The lady is bugged and Pennyroyal presses grapes... bee’s knees and Kankakee and number five knitting needles and Tweedledee and Tweedledum, two of a kind and who’s behind?—Temple netted a few, then a few more butterflies from the brainstorm swirling around her, then some more... and then she knew.
Temple switched on the bedside lamp. Louie stared accusingly from the foot of her bed, his emerald-green eyes bisected by black vertical slits. Temple blinked at the sudden brightness as she paged through the phone book, dialed the number, told the man who answered what she wanted.
It took a long time, but C. R. Molina was finally on the line, sounding as if she were speaking from Alpha Centauri.
“It’s Temple Barr.”
“Do you know what time it is? I sleep, too.”
“No, but it doesn’t matter. You said you wanted to know—immediately. I know what I know now.”
“You know what you know....”
“Louie told me. He’s back and he’s okay. Boy, is he okay. Come to the memorial service for Chester Royal at the Lover’s Knot Wedding Chapel at ten a.m. tomorrow, and I’ll show you.”
"You mean today, damn it.”
“Okay; today, damn it. Just come.” Then Temple told the homicide lieutenant exactly what she wanted her to bring, besides a few policemen.
Electra had outdone herself.
The chapel’s latticework nuptial archway peeked through a cloud of somber crepe. The soft-sculpture people filling the back pews had been attired in tasteful touches of black—arm bands on the gentlemen; veils or hats on the ladies.
Massed sprays of gladioli and other fleshy blooms, courtesy of Sam’s Funeral Home, looked fresh from last night’s wake and broadcast a torpid, mournful odor.
Temple wore a black linen suit and her Beverly Feldman black leather spikes with furtive touches of jet. An onyx choker circled her neck to hide the beginnings of a bruise. She felt a bit like a heavy metal songstress, albeit tired to her toes.
On the other side of the chapel doors stood Lorna Fennick, a brown dress underlining her muddy coloring. Lorna’s face had thinned and tautened since Temple had first met the PR woman. Only her eyes moved when she nervously studied the assembled soft-sculpture forms, as if expecting them to do something inappropriate.
She came to sudden life, however, when Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce executive Raymond Avenour entered with an unknown woman on his arm. Lorna escorted them to the front with painful deference. They didn’t even acknowledge the forever-silent fellow mourners, as if used to captive audiences.
Temple observed the scene with an odd detachment. Mavis Davis arrived, her permed fleece of hair covered by a skimpy black lace mantilla, her eyes anxious above half-moons of dark maroon. The woman’s glance darted around the chapel and finally spotted the posed mute figures, finding nothing to linger upon even in their harmless if slightly loony presence.
Rowena Novak came in accompanied by Earnest Jaspar—that combination startled Temple. But then Rowena had been Chester Royal’s wife. Likely she’d met the friend that had outlasted all of Chester’s wives. Perhaps the reason for that longevity could be found in the shameful secrets of the Gilhooley trial. Guilt cements strange fellowships.
At ten minutes to ten, Matt Devine materialized from the breezeway to the Circle Ritz. He had procured a black suit somewhere and took his place at the organ with a properly subdued air. He looked gorgeous in black.
Temple was still contemplating Matt’s unexpected participation when Lanyard Hunter arrived, his patrician voice preceding him as Lorna went to meet him.
“A wedding chapel! Ironic—like holding Chester’s memorial service in a neighborhood bar he’d been kicked out of repeatedly.”
Hunter’s silver pompadour brushed the crepe swagging the top of the arch as he stepped under it and drew Lorna’s arm through his. She led him to the front.
The next arrival surprised Temple. Claudia Esterbrook, licking her lips nervously, wearing a blatant red suit and her usual mask of impatience. She nodded to those already assembled and sat sullenly, as though obligated to be here. Temple wondered why.
Owen Tharp came last. He briskly waved away the solicitous Lorna, nodded to Temple—the only one who did—then strode halfway down the short aisle. He deliberately sat next to one of Electra’s mute congregation, a well-stuffed matron whose wide-brimmed hat today trailed black satin roses and midnight veiling with bridal panache.
Temple consulted her watch. The little hand was on ten and the big hand was edging toward twelve. Where was Lieutenant Molina? Temple caught Electra’s eye at the front of the house... er, chapel. This was not a theater, after all, and Temple was no longer doing PR for the Guthrie. That didn’t mean she couldn’t stage-manage a bit. So she eyed Electra and tapped her wristwatch with a forefinger.
Stall, the gesture said, you know how.
Electra knew—not what was going to happen, but that something more than a memorial service and a morose scent was in the air. Still, she had all the relevant press releases stacked on her lectern and was prepared to ruminate long and loudly on Chester Royal’s life and death as well as the nature of things physical and spiritual.
Totally unexpected, the last guest ambled through the ever-open breezeway door... Midnight Louie, his coat freshly groomed to its fullest, most funereal glory, his white whiskers spanking clean after a morning repast of shrimp.
But where was Molina?
The long hand ticked the twelve and there was no postponing the moment of truth and consequences.
Electra nodded solemnly to Matt, who coaxed a series of doleful sounds from the Lowrey’s liquid throat. Louie deserted the vicinity of the organ for Temple’s ankles. Temple didn’t recognize the melody, probably some Michael Jackson ditty played at thirty-three-and-a-third speed, but it was ripe with ponderous chords.
She swallowed a smile. From the back of the house—the chapel, that is—the dummies’ showy black was reminiscent of a mob funeral.
The chapel had never held so many living spectators. Las Vegas weddings were famed for their lack of encumbrances—waiting periods, blood tests, expensive attendants and witnesses who might not forever hold their peace. The ceiling fans spun with syrupy laissez-faire. The room was warming up with the crowd and the day, or maybe Temple was just nervous about what she was about to do.
Or about Molina’s continuing absence... didn’t the woman know the meaning of the word “important”?
“We are gathered today,” Electra began, “in this city of extravagance, to honor a life that has not so much ended as evolved onto another plane.”
Heads swiveled toward each other at this overoptimistic invocation. No one present was eager to imagine Chester Royal as evolved in any respect, especially if it meant his survival, his transportation via some unearthly airline that might return any residue of his noxious personality back to earth.
“He is not gone,” Electra declaimed, “he is... removed.”
Temple glanced at Matt. He had spun away from the organ and was watching Electra with polite wonder. Well, Electra was on the money. Someone had “removed” Chester Royal, all right.
“We must not mourn,” she continued vehemently. “Even now Chester Royal may be floating in the ether of our vaguest thoughts, a constant presence seeking a welcoming place. As you t
hink of him, so he shall be with you all. He was a man to remember.”
With loathing, Temple thought, imagining the unspoken sentiments of the gathered “mourners.”
“An... endlessly affectionate human being.”
Five ex-wives.
“A brilliant entrepreneur of art and business.”
Who blended the crassest concerns of both into a mediocre hash.
“He always had time to consider a friend.”
And how to whittle a friend’s ego to matchsticks.
“A man responsible for the success of many beyond their wildest dreams.”
Their wildest dreams included killing him.
“Who asked nothing for himself.”
But others’ total surrender.
“And whom we shall all miss and mourn deeply.”
Even as we celebrate our freedom.
“And whom we will never forget.”
Until we can get out of this hot-plate town and home to business-as-usual....
Electra paused to gauge her audience’s numbness level. She eyed Temple, who looked at her watch, the door and shook her head. Electra forged on. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to discuss the healing power of crystals for those troubled by grief.”
A stifled groan came from someone among the congregation. It acted as a secret signal. Both of the chapel’s outer doors whisked open. Light flooded in like a blare of trumpets as Molina and three uniformed officers entered the back of the chapel.
Temple rushed over. “Have you got it?”
Molina flourished a handful of limp fax paper. Temple reached for it. Molina wasn’t about to let go.
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?” the detective suggested sweetly, with rock salt under the sugar.
“Because if I’m wrong, you won’t end up looking like a fool again.”
The slick papers strained between their hands. Then Molina let go and Temple had sole custody. Hurriedly she glanced through them. Aha! The one she was sure would be there!
Heads had turned to note the new arrivals, so Temple beckoned the emissaries of the law aside.
“Everybody who’s involved in the case is here,” she told Molina in a stage whisper. Temple nodded to Midnight Louie, who had leaped onto a pew to sit beside a well-stuffed gentleman in a top hat. “Even my missing, er, associate, who discovered the body in the first place.”
“Everyone except the catnapper,” Molina said.
“Even the catnapper.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want to miss booking anybody on a major charge like that,” the detective said sourly. “Can we get on with it? I’m tired and I want to go back to headquarters and do paperwork.”
Temple nodded at Electra, who finished up with a rhetorical flourish about surviving personalities, channeling, loving thy neighbor and the benefits of brown rice.
Temple’s footsteps sounded ominous on the aisle’s white tile flooring as she approached the front. Whispers rose among the living members of the congregation. One of these nice people had tried to kabob and throttle her just last night. Molina and one officer followed her. The other two policemen stationed themselves at the chapel’s two exits.
Electra faded to the sidelines as discreetly as a woman of her size and personality could manage. Temple reached the front and turned. “I have some final words to say about Chester Royal,” she said. “I’m sure that none of you want to leave Las Vegas with his murder unsolved.”
This statement, expectedly, brought no response.
“A sign bearing four letters was found upon the body. Only the murderer, the police and myself, who was the first person upon the scene, would know that.”
Temple produced Exhibit A from Electra’s lectern, a placard she had prepared that morning, and held it up.
“You all know the meaning of this term ‘stet,’ with the possible exception of Mr. Jaspar.” He nodded gratefully. “Let it stand.” She paused. “Someone did not want to let Chester Royal stand. Someone struck him down. That’s what editors say when they delete type, they ‘strike it out’ when they turn it into dead matter. And another thing some of you may not know. The murder weapon was an old-fashioned steel knitting needle.”
Temple lifted an example off the podium. This time gasps greeted her display.
“It was used by someone who knew where and how to thrust it, someone with medical knowledge. Almost all of you had the access to that knowledge, through your association with Chester Royal, if nothing else.”
“Wait a minute,” said Raymond Avenour. “If this is a round-’em-up and declare-’em-guilty session, I respectfully withdraw. I know nothing of medicine, and little of Chester Royal personally. I’m here representing my publishing house, period, not to attend an amateur detective melodrama.”
“I am an amateur,” Temple agreed, “but a very real police detective is present to take matters in hand if necessary. And I have genuine evidence to present.”
“A mock-up of a sign and a knitting needle you bought in the five-and-dime?” Claudia Esterbrook said scathingly. “Get real.”
“I borrowed this needle,” Temple said, “from our esteemed... officiator. And whether this is the needle that killed Chester Royal doesn’t matter. It was always a symbolic weapon anyway.”
“Symbolic?” That was Molina, sounding disgusted.
Temple nodded. “I assumed, rather sexistly, that the use of a knitting needle indicated a woman perpetrator. No matter that anyone could easily smuggle it past the guards onto the convention floor. Never mind that, properly directed under the ribs and up into the vital organs, it could be swiftly fatal. Discount the fact that the bleeding would be internal and therefore discreet, or that the eccentric choice of weapon would baffle the police.”
Molina started to say something, but Temple pushed on.
“Some of you may not have known that Chester Royal was a practicing physician long before he was a nonfiction writer, a packager, an editor and the publisher of an imprint.”
The right faces showed apparent surprise... Lorna Fennick’s, Claudia Esterbrook’s, Mavis Davis’s—all the women in the case except Rowena Novak, who sat as if carved from headstone granite. She knew, she had always known.
“How did you know, Mr. Hunter? And you did, didn’t you?”
“Lanyard,” he corrected with oily grace and a condescending smile. “From my many medical masquerades. Chester showed a knowledge far beyond the enthusiast’s. I can smell doctors; I make quite a game at cocktail parties out of correctly identifying their specialties.”
“And Chester Royal, how did he react to your amazing ability?”
“He was not amused.” Hunter glanced rather fondly at Lorna Fennick, who had come to sit beside him. “Lorna was his assistant then, and quite innocently ran across his medical degree stuffed in a drawer. Chester was furious.”
Temple turned to Lorna with new insight. “So he fired you because you knew too much.”
Lorna nodded reluctantly. “I was ready to leave anyway. I’d had enough of his manipulations. He hated me because I managed not only to stay on at the parent company, but achieve a responsible position there.”
Temple saw another light. “And you tipped Lanyard Hunter off to Royal’s Achilles’ heel!”
“I didn’t ‘tip him off,’ Temple. I complained bitterly to him about Chester’s unfair treatment. We were seeing each other, though Chester didn’t know it. Lanyard had just submitted an autobio on his medical charade. Chester said he wanted to buy it, in the meantime trying to convince Lanyard to suppress it and try fiction instead.”
Hunter nodded. “When Lorna told me how angry Chester had been at her discovery of the medical degree, I knew he had something to hide.”
“So that’s how you became a favored author—you blackmailed him.”
“Nothing so obvious. He knew that I knew and walked more softly, that’s all. I didn’t know anything, other than that he feared something in his past. That was enough to give m
e an edge; like anyone in an author-eat-author world, I used it.”
On the other side of the aisle, Owen Tharp snorted derisively. “You ever consider simply writing well as a method of career advancement?”
“Why?” Hunter shot back. “That never mattered that much to Royal, or he wouldn’t have put out so many of your books.”
Temple watched the infant ghostwritten Hunter/Tharp collaboration combust before her very eyes in a puff of surly smoke.
“I can’t believe what was going on at Pennyroyal Press,” Mavis Davis said. “It was every man for himself and exploit the women. I’m glad no more of my books will appear under that awful imprint.”
“Nor will any others.” Avenour suddenly spoke up. “I’ll deny it if anyone leaks the news, but R-C-D is deep-sixing the imprint. I’d advise Mr. Hunter and Mr. Tharp to find new publishers.”
“What about my sales figures!” Hunter blurted out. He got no reply.
“I’ve been very patient,” Lieutenant Molina put in, shifting her weight.
Temple held up her palms to quell the objections. “Just a few more points.” She turned back to the audience. “Certainly Chester Royal was unique in the ill will he managed to foster through Pennyroyal Press—but his murder had little to do with authorial or editorial ego, or business exploitation, or publishing, period. Which, of course, is why it happened at the ABA, where everyone—even the police—would presume that it did.”
“What about the ‘STET’ you said was written on the body?” Owen Tharp asked.
“That ‘stet’ cuts both ways. It was a decoy to underline the publishing connection, but the killer was cocky enough to make a play on words at the same time. It’s also an abbreviation of the doctor’s most notable prop, the stethoscope.”
Lorna Fennick was frowning. “Temple, you’ve got a mega-creative imagination. Even if it implied a stethoscope, so what? Everybody knew Chester Royal put out medical thrillers, so that leads right back to publishing.”
“Not... necessarily. This killer was sending a message, one that had festered for a long, long time. The knitting needle was more than a crude attempt to focus suspicion on one of the many women in the case, such as Mavis Davis, or Rowena Novak, or even you, Lorna, because the killer knew of Chester’s misogyny. The knitting needle was as symbolic as the ‘stet.’ A knitting needle especially fit the crime for which he was paying with his life.”
Cat in an Alphabet Soup Page 20